


make it nice now

by deniigiq



Category: Daredevil (TV), Deadpool - All Media Types, The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: 2/3s of Team Red, Crafts, Family Feels, Gen, Gift Giving, Holidays, Home Improvement, Sewing, Team Bonding, Team as Family, Thanksgiving, Wade the master tailor, its the fucking holidays guys I'm getting in the spirit, making the new office home, the disaster twins of Team Red I guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-28
Updated: 2018-10-28
Packaged: 2019-08-08 23:00:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,037
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16438454
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deniigiq/pseuds/deniigiq
Summary: The last coat of imperial purple paint went on with a feeling of accomplishment and heralded in new feelings of intense anxiety. Nelson & Murdock hadn’t lasted and Foggy’s stomach ached with dread that Nelson, Murdock & Page might not either.Castle told him to stuff it and prepare for the worst.“Ain’t done anyone any good getting their hopes up,” he pointed out in his gruff way, “But at least now, if everything goes to hell, you’ll get twice as much for the office space.”Frank sure had a way with words.(Nelson, Murdock & Page get the new office ready for business before Thanksgiving, and Matt tries on this whole family thing.)





	make it nice now

**Author's Note:**

> so england is now entering that part of the year that every atom in my body abhors (i.e. winter) and I have many many feelings about people getting together around the holidays as I try to figure out a way to get back to my own hellscape, which is winter in my mama's state. 
> 
> I also have many many feelings about the new offices of Nelson, Murdock & Page. Please have them below.

Matt was hiding something and Foggy and Karen were trying to sort out between themselves the probability that it was life-threatening.

He didn’t seem to be limping or bleeding any more than usual, so that took the risk from 70 to 50%. He hadn’t been fidgeting or chewing his fingers either, which dropped them into 40% territory. But 40% was still only 10% away from 50, so they remained suspicious.

Foggy leaned out of the new office he was sanding the floor of to watch Matt press his ear against the wall, trying to find the bit of wiring their new neighbors, Mr. & Mrs. Rattus and their twelve thousand children, had chewed through. They were going to have to knock the wall in anyways to fix it, but Matt was adamant that if they were going to do it, they should at least start smashing in the right cardinal direction.

He kept flicking the fuse switch on and then scampering across the wall, following the sound of the current as it traveled towards the bulb in the far left corner of the room. It was fascinating. Obviously, despite his best efforts, Matt wasn’t as fast as electricity, but he claimed that the wires kind of ‘glowed’ when they were on, and so was determined to find out where the glow stopped before his ears assimilated the sound into the background noise. The addition of drywall allegedly made the process tricky and he’d been bouncing up and down the wall for the last ten minutes.

He seemed to have isolated the issue to a space he couldn’t quite reach above his head, about six inches down from the ceiling.

He glowered at it. And then set off to find something he could jump onto after another good flick of the switch so that he could verify for sure that that was their problem area.

“We could have used him up north in Vermont,” Karen said, rustling through the doorway with her newly acquired gallon of floor varnish. A plastic bag of varnishing instruments was wrapped around her other wrist, the one whose hand clutched her keys. “We knocked down two walls trying to find one set of fucked wires and ended up with _two_ sets of fucked wires.”

Yeah, they _could_ have hired professional builders to fix the place up. Sure. Of course they could have. But Foggy’s father was scandalized at the prospect of him hiring anyone to do the work his very flesh and blood had been doing for generations. Not to mention, Karen wanted to add suspicious additions to the place for hiding things like firearms. And Matt was likely to hiss at any contractors in his new space before he’d pissed on it to his liking, so there were a lot of factors to consider here.

Foggy was choosing to think of it as a team-building effort.

Karen dropped the bag and the gallon on the ancient, warped countertop in their new kitchenette. Matt had gotten into the blue painter’s tape over there and plastered the wall socket over with it for no reason Foggy or Karen had yet discerned. Karen ripped it off and switched on the fuse to Matt’s indignant yelp. She plugged in the coffeemaker over his complaints.

Karen told him to make himself useful and go get lunch, and he grumbled off mutinously.

She walked over to one of the huge windows that they needed to clean and possibly double-pane to watch him tap his irritable way around the street corner and out of range.

“He spill yet?” she asked Foggy.

Not yet.

A week into this hiding business, it became apparent that, whatever it was he was doing, Matt had somehow roped Frank into it. That alone forced the imminent death potential to rocket from 40 back up to 60%.

Foggy knew this because he’d come into Matt’s apartment the other day just as Castle was leaving, hands in the air, saying, “I don’t know, but there’s gotta be an easier way of doing it, Red.”

Matt had draped himself, put out, on the couch surrounded by exactly no evidence of what he and Castle had been talking about.

Karen had interrogated Frank the following day, but Frank wasn’t moved by any interrogation methods that did not draw blood anymore. The man had, at one point in his life, had two toddlers screaming through his home on a daily basis. Persistence and volume of annoyance meant nothing to him. Karen had run out of things to threaten him with, although he had said, “It’s not even a big deal, lay off,” which meant that it was, in fact, a big deal, and that Matt probably needed heaps of additional, non-judgmental support and encouragement.

“You think it’s Fisk again?” Karen asked into the frigid cold of the new office. Foggy hummed.

“Well, we’ll find out, won’t we?”

Karen was not satisfied with playing the long game.

“I’ll lean harder on Frank,” she decided.

 

 

Whatever it was that Matt was doing now involved Wade, Foggy came to see. Wade who shook a tin of sewing supplies at Matt when he did anything Wade considered poor form. Wade who stuffed his death rattle into his Hello Kitty backpack and stomped off, nose in the air, just as Foggy came all the way into the apartment with cider and dinner.

Matt shouted after Wade that he owed him one, even though Wade was a fucking dick, and Wade professed his undying love and affection from halfway down the hallway.  

Matt did not mention what he owed Wade for.

He did, however, ask Foggy whether people were putting out wreaths and shit yet.

No, buddy, it’s not even Thanksgiving.

Why was he so disappointed?

 

 

Matt and Karen had the kind of relationship that Foggy wished would roll itself right off a cliff and die sometimes. He loved them dearly, but they were _children_.

“You may as well paint the walls black,” Castle told Foggy while the other two fought over paint chips that Matt couldn’t even see. “At least it’ll buy you some time between the blood drying and having to paint over it.”

Foggy hated to admit it, but Frank kind of had a point. But they were not having a black fucking office, that just wasn’t done.

“If you do pink, it’ll be like one of those Swiss prisons,” Castle suggested instead, “Supposed to reduce aggression and stuff.”

Foggy watched the idiots before him, squabbling over whether robins laid blue or green eggs. Matt had decided they were green and Karen was determined that the color he was remembering was a kind of cyan. Matt was determined then, that cyan must also be green, which sent Karen into a tizzy because _no_ cyan was blue.

Foggy, who had taken Color Theory 201 in college as an elective, knew that cyan was literally smack in the middle of blue and green, but did not want to enter the discussion because it was fucking _Google-able guys._

He returned to Castle.

“You know, there might be something to that,” he said.

 

 

Matt climbed in through Foggy’s window that night, all black and blood, and informed him that he’d had a think and would allow for cyan paint, provided that Karen admitted it was green.

Foggy told him that he and Karen were allowed one accent wall and the rest of it was going to be the literal color of the universe with wood accents and he’d hear no more of it.

 

 

Frank spent his time laying-low as a construction worker, it turned out, and he offered his services of punching a hole in the wall where Matt was insistent the fault in the wire was located. Matt had stolen the painter’s tape again when no one was looking and had put a big ‘X’ over it. Foggy asked Karen covertly what she’d done to the man as he watched Castle ward Matt away for the second time with the head of a hammer pointed at him, threatening that he would fix the fucking fault, so long as certain blind lawyers kept their very breakable fingers out of the way of his hammer.

Matt relented grumpily and went to go sand the floor of Foggy’s office to his satisfaction. Which was a bad idea because Matt couldn’t be trusted not to sand things into frictionless surfaces. His sense of touch was too acute for him to be great at figuring out a good stopping point for that kind of thing. He was much, much better at waxing shit because he couldn’t see the shine and so allotted each area the same amount of time and pressure.

Once Frank was elbow deep in the wall, Karen sent Matt out for lunch and poked Castle’s soft spots until he snapped at her.

“It’s a fucking present or something, alright? Lay off.”

Oh, interesting.

“A present for who?” Karen agitated.

“Satan.”

Well, that was something, at least.

 

 

Foggy and Karen finally, _finally_ found out when they crashed into Matt’s place, maybe a little drunk and fully intending to make him as drunk as themselves that Friday night.

They found Matt and his murderous allies sitting in a nest of fat quarters and quilt batting.

 

 

Matt was embarrassed and sheepish about it and refused to answer any and all questions regarding this gift-giving, quilt-making business, although he did allow his now slightly-more sober companions to join the exciting task of putting tape a half an inch around all the edges of the quarters.

Frank, they learned, had been on the hunt for a certain kind of sewing machine with some features that would help Matt use it. He’d found one, but it needed a lot of repairs and while Matt had told him it wasn’t a big deal, he’d figure it out, Frank was the human equivalent of his dog.

Maxie boy sunk his teeth in and didn’t let go.

Maxie boy was currently lounging, fat, warm, and happy, by Matt’s radiator. He occasionally came over to lay his big square jaw and sad eyes on Wade’s hip, despite (or maybe to incite?) Wade’s vociferous disgust.

Matt had apparently asked Wade to help him learn how to sew non-flesh things (it needed to be specified because Matt was entirely proficient at sewing together human skin) in the meantime because, and Foggy was honestly shocked by this, Wade was really good at sewing. He made and repaired all his own suits and was generally extremely knowledgeable about the whole process.

He would not explain where he’d come by these skills. He just said it was cold up north where he was born.

Karen started trying to guess the region of Canada fantastically poorly (she only knew Alberta and Ontario and kept forgetting that she’d already guessed them) which entertained Wade enormously.

 

 

Foggy could suddenly understand Matt’s recent preoccupation with the colors. The quilt he was making was definitely a kind of patchwork thing, but he and Wade had mostly been working through various cream quarters (which Wade, endearingly, embellished with some fancy stitch-work when Matt finished his lines of shaky stitches). They hadn’t picked out any of the many different patterns of color on the floor and it was pretty clear to Foggy that Matt was quietly freaking out about them.

Castle and Wade didn’t mention this because of the bro-code or something, so Foggy took it upon himself to do some gentle prying.

You can’t pick a color unless you know who is supposed to own it.

Matt didn’t want to say. He insisted, however, that it not be too fancy or bright.

Karen and Foggy addressed the fabric before them and set to combining Karen’s fashion sense with what Foggy remembered from his Color Theory class.

They offered Matt a muted purple and mustard combination which he accepted in relief and definitely did not tear up a little over.

Thus inspired, Karen decided that the office needed a purple accent wall as well.

 

 

The last coat of imperial purple paint went on with a feeling of accomplishment and heralded in new feelings of intense anxiety.

Nelson & Murdock hadn’t lasted and Foggy’s stomach ached with dread that Nelson, Murdock & Page might not either.

Castle told him to stuff it and prepare for the worst.

“Ain’t done anyone any good getting their hopes up,” he pointed out in his gruff way, “But at least now, if everything goes to hell, you’ll get twice as much for the office space.”

Frank sure had a way with words.

Matthew, on the other hand, now had both an office and a quilt and he loved both of them with such tenderness that it made Foggy’s heart hurt. The only thing left to do was to get a plaque made and submit the advertisements to the handful of newspapers Karen had drummed up for this purpose. Bucky Barnes, who ranked (unfortunately and fondly) among Foggy’s former clients had offered to show up to the opening so that they could post a little opening video on their new social media page. He declared that his beloved Steven and Samuel would attend as well, ‘dressed to the fucking’ nines, doll. Don’t even sweat it, we got this.’

Matt did not approve of this because he did not want Captain America or the Falcon in his second living room before he’d bled on it to mark his territory.

Karen thought that this was the most amazing thing she’d ever heard.

“Does he really talk like that?” she’d whispered to Foggy after he’d taken the phone off speaker, “Or is he just putting it on to fuck with us?”

It was a little of both, really.

“He’s going to flirt with both of you,” Foggy briefed his two partners, “And you are not to respond. At all. Matthew, did you get that? Do _not_ flirt back.”

Matt pursed his lips and gave a little helpless shrug which was definitely not an affirmative.

 

 

Matt was flirting with Bucky Barnes.

 _Fuck_.

And Bucky Barnes was flirting back. Complimenting their accent wall and comparing it to the shade of red glass in Matt’s lenses.

Just. Why.

“I am so fucking sorry,” Cap told Foggy, all in his dress blues and horrified. “I’ll go get him right—”

Karen daintily grabbed his bicep and pulled him back so she could bask in his cologne longer.

“No, no. They’re fine. Matt’s playing the fool,” she told him lightly. “He’ll throw your buddy out the window if he oversteps.”

Foggy wanted to remind her firstly, that they didn’t talk about Matt throwing people out windows in public, and secondly, that Frank had bugged the place before he left and would not approve of her petting a human weapon he had not screened beforehand. Sam Wilson appeared and interrupted, leaning over Cap’s shoulder also in his dress uniform, and whispered,

“Are we doing something about that or leaving it tonight?”

‘That’ was Barnes smoothing down Matt’s lapel with a fiendish smile. Cap sighed gustily.

“Apparently, we’re leaving it for now,” he said. He gave Foggy a knowing once-over that made him suddenly extremely uncomfortable. When he finally stepped away, to go extract Barnes from his bullshit after he leaned forward and whispered what was for sure a proposition into Matt’s ear, Foggy gave Sam a long, murderous look.

It had nothing to do with the flirting.

“I didn’t say shit,” Sam swore.

“Doesn’t seem like you didn’t say shit,” Foggy hissed. Karen caught on quick and made a soft little ‘whoops.’

“Didn’t say shit,” Sam promised, “Hand to God.”

“Uh-huh,” Foggy said skeptically.

 

 

The quilt that Matt made turned out really well for a first attempt. Matt even learned a bit about how to use a sewing machine after Wade had dedicated two hours to swearing at the thing Castle finished beating into submission.

There was something deeply entertaining about an infamous assassin hissing profanity at a machine under his breath as it merrily chomped its way through fabric.

Matt held up the finished quilt in his living room around Thanksgiving so that Karen and Foggy could see it. It was just about as tall as himself and almost three times as wide as his shoulders. He asked Foggy and Karen what they thought. The colored pieces rose through the cream a little like a sunset, if Monet had painted in quilt blocks. Matt had put all the yellows at the bottom and had convinced Wade to help him find some oranges and reds for the middle. Purples loomed at the top.

“It’s beautiful,” Karen told him. He got shy about it and started folding it up immediately.

“Do we get to know who it’s for yet?” Foggy asked from the arm of the couch.

No. Not yet.

 

 

Not until Matt begged off going to Thanksgiving with Foggy’s family for the first time since they’d known each other.

Foggy tried not to let his hurt show, but Matt noticed and fidgeted and apologized and said that it wasn’t anything like that. It was.

It was.

He clenched his fists and looked away.

And Foggy got it.

“Oh, Matty,” he said.

And Matt was trying not to cry.

“Oh, buddy, come here,” Foggy told him with open arms. Matt didn’t come, so Foggy went to him. Matt sniffed into his shoulder and Foggy swallowed so he didn’t start crying too. “It’s alright, you go to her. I’ll take Karen. Ma just needs someone to like more than me, that’s all. She’ll understand. I understand.”

 

 

His ma was furious that Matt was not coming to Thanksgiving and she made this well known among the cousins and to a very uncomfortable Karen. Foggy rescued the youngest Nelson from the conceit and violence of her siblings and dropped her into Karen’s lap as a protection amulet. He took his mom’s hands and pulled her out of the kitchen and to the couch.

She got quiet and concerned as they went.

“What’s this about, honey?” she asked, her eyes glancing over to where Karen was nervously bouncing the baby.

“Ma, Matt’s not here, not because he doesn’t want to be, but because--Can you keep a secret?”

Karen stiffened and stared at him in realization. The baby grabbed at her hair. His mom searched his face and then nodded. Foggy nodded back.

“He met his own mom for the first time, uh, recently,” he told her, only lying a bit. Her face crumpled immediately in sympathy. He continued before she could get a word in. “He doesn’t know how to have a mom yet, and I don’t think she knows how to have a son yet, but I think that they’re trying to have each other. And I think that this is the first time they’ve had a Thanksgiving together as a family.”

His mom couldn’t make words because she was already waving her hands at her eyes, face tilted towards the sky, trying not to ruin her mascara. Foggy grinned at her involuntarily. Karen hugged the baby and swayed from side to side in joy.

“So uh, he sends his love, but—”

“Shut up, Franklin, I can’t cry, I have pies in the oven,” his mom snapped. She sniffed and stood up. “Where are they? Tell them to come here. I want to meet our Matthew’s mother.”

Oh fuck.

He had not thought this out.

“Uh—”

“Go get them, Franklin, _now._ No, Karen, honey, you’re staying right there. That’s a good girl, Ellie loves you,” she snapped a fierce look at Foggy. “ _Now._ ”

 

 

Which was how Foggy ended up standing outside Matt’s church a few streets over, trying to figure out how to convince Matt that he did not have to do anything because Foggy’s mom told him to. Matt had always been a little shell-shocked by Foggy’s mom and tended to do whatever she told him (except eat sufficiently, according to her) because he didn’t know how else to respond to parental authority.

Foggy really didn’t want to get between whatever moment Matt and Sister Maggie were trying to make for each other. He truly didn’t. He was so proud and so happy that Matt was trying to make something of what he had, even through all the betrayal he’d felt originally. So he felt like an ass when he went into the church and started asking around for the Sister.

She wasn’t there, he was told, to his surprise. She’d asked for the night off and was out somewhere in the city.

Foggy knew where.

 

 

He knocked on the door of Matt’s apartment and Matt opened it in concern within moments.

“Are you alright?” he asked immediately.

“Yeah, no. I’m great. I’m, uh. Really sorry, actually.”

Matt’s brow furrowed.

“What happened?”

Foggy threw up his hands.

“Nothing bad, nothing like that. Just uh. I may have fucked up and toldmymomwhyyoudidn’tcome?”

It took a second for Matt to process this, but Foggy heard Sister Maggie start laughing behind him.

“Is she? Mad?” Matt asked nervously, moving aside so that Foggy could come in. Sister Maggie was sitting on the couch. Her new quilt laid primly across her lap. She smoothed it gently.

“Not exactly,” Foggy told him.

 

 

Foggy didn’t know what his mom was expecting, but it sure as fuck was not a nun. Sister Maggie and Matt next to each other was quite a picture. Matt had gotten all his dad’s height during the nine-month gene tango and it was almost comical to see him towering over his mother. Foggy’s mom thought it was just darling and went to make Foggy’s dad realize how darling it was as well.

She then had two thousand questions for Sister Maggie, up to and including how someone such as herself had managed to conceal a pregnancy from the Mother Superior.

Sister Maggie was extremely uncomfortable with this question, Foggy could see, and he just about stepped in, when she touched his mom’s arm and said simply,

“We didn’t tell that woman shit. Formed a pact the second week she took over. Life or death and that was it.”

Foggy had not expected that. Matt had evidently not expected that either, judging by his eyebrows.

Foggy’s mom was delighted.

“Lots of room in those robes to hide a baby bump, huh?” she asked, nudging Sister Maggie gently.

“Didn’t need the robes,” Sister Maggie told her, “Jackie gave me his.”

Which was the cutest fucking thing Foggy had ever heard. Karen covered her face with how hard she was smiling. Matt looked a little soppy about it too.

Sister Maggie was afterwards kidnapped and occasionally returned when Foggy’s mom and aunts remembered that she and Matt were supposed to be bonding. Foggy eventually employed the baby trick a second time so as to protect her from the hoards.

“Sorry to intrude,” he told her, “It’s just that Matty’s family now and uh, my mom’s—”

“Lovely,” Sister Maggie told him, “We were just being cold anyways.”

 

 

Sister Maggie and Matt didn’t stay for that long, maybe an hour, before they took off back to Matt’s place to finish making their little Thanksgiving at Matt’s apartment.

Foggy intervened before his mom could force them to stay by intercepting her on the way from the kitchen and explaining that the two of them needed some time to form motherly and sonly bonds and she relented on the condition that they take cheesecake with them.

When the two of them were off, Karen edged in next to Foggy and gave him a smile that reached the apples of her cheeks.

“I’m going to go soon to see Frank,” she told him, “But I’m so happy for them, Fogs.”

“Me too,” he told her.

A hug and a kiss and Karen was off to go see a man and his dog. She was forced to take food with her as Foggy’s mom was convinced she was starving. Upon being told that Karen was going to go see her friend who was also alone for Thanksgiving, Foggy’s mom became convinced that whoever they were, they were starving too.

And then little cousin Sydney broke a lamp and Foggy had to go deal with that and things carried on as usual.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Please note: I'm not putting this in the Dumpster Fire Verse as it is pretty DD-centric, but you can read it as a side story of that verse if you want. 
> 
> Should also note that Sam knows about DD (from 'when you need the devil'), but promised Foggy he wouldn't tell anyone about it.


End file.
